Accessing laptop remotely?

[stoid]

I want to be able to leave my laptop in my apartment on crappy weather days so that I'm not risking carrying my PowerBook on my bike to campus. I have an always on internet connection from my apartment. I know how I would do it normally do it, but I am using an Airport Express base station and so my laptop's individual IP address is not the same as my external IP address (obvious as it's 10.0.1.3, and confirmed with www.ipchicken.com).

Since I have played network games and the like at the apartment I know that it's possible for other computers to see mine. There must be a way to connect then. How do I set this up?

[jimsowden]

Not exactly sure. The remote login from terminal is ssh user@ip, but since your express is routing the ip address i wouldn't know what to tell you, other than to directly plug it into the cable modem and try to login via your assigned ip. I suppose you could also put server on it.

[Westside guy]

It's called port forwarding (Airport Admin calls it "Port Mapping"). You just tell the Airport Express to take any connections to the port(s) you specify and send them on to your laptop's private IP space.

From the outside, you just ssh to the external (public) IP of your Airport Express - it'll do the rest.

[stoid]

Thanks! Not being terrible Windows XP savvy, I'll need to access those files from the Windows XP machines on campus. How exactly would I do that if I set it for port 2981?

edit: Might as well tell me how to do it from another Mac as well, OS X.3

[abhishekit]

^^^ from another mac or linux box, its easy. just open the terminal and write
ssh -l username ipaddress

it would ask for password and log you in.

From windows, you first have to download cygwin i think, which is a unix emulator i think. And then you have to open cygwin window and write the above command.

cheers

edit: don't forget to enable remote login on your mac from system pref.

[iMeowbot]

Thanks! Not being terrible Windows XP savvy, I'll need to access those files from the Windows XP machines on campus. How exactly would I do that if I set it for port 2981?

Never mind cygwin, you can do everything you need with PuTTY and friends (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/). PuTTY for interactive terminal sessions, PSFTP or PSCP for file transfers. These are small enough to carry on floppies if need be. (You can specify the port number with all of these.)